Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The latest from Robert Reich - follow link to original.
----------------------------------------------http://robertreich.org/

Presidential aspirants in both parties are
talking about saving the middle class. But the middle class can’t be
saved unless Wall Street is tamed.
The Street’s excesses pose a continuing danger to average Americans.
And its ongoing use of confidential corporate information is defrauding
millions of middle-class investors.
Yet most presidential aspirants don’t want to talk about taming the
Street because Wall Street is one of their largest sources of campaign
money.
Do we really need reminding about what happened six years ago? The
financial collapse crippled the middle class and poor — consuming the
savings of millions of average Americans, and causing 23 million to lose their jobs, 9.3 million to lose their health insurance, and some 1 million to lose their homes.
A repeat performance is not unlikely. Wall Street’s biggest banks are
much larger now than they were then. Five of them hold about 45 percent of America’s banking assets. In 2000, they held 25 percent.
And money is cheaper than ever. The Fed continues to hold the prime interest rate near zero.
This has fueled the Street’s eagerness to borrow money at rock-bottom
rates and use it to make risky bets that will pay off big if they
succeed, but will cause big problems if they go bad.
We learned last week that Goldman Sachs has been on a shopping binge, buying cheap real estate stretching from Utah to Spain, and a variety of companies.

If not technically a violation of the new Dodd-Frank banking law, Goldman’s binge surely violates its spirit.

Meanwhile, the Street’s lobbyists have gotten Congress to repeal a provision of Dodd-Frank curbing excessive speculation by the big banks.

The language was drafted by Citigroup and personally pushed by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
Not incidentally, Dimon recently complained of being “under assault” by bank regulators.

Last year JPMorgan’s board voted to boost Dimon’s pay to $20 million, despite the bank paying out more than $20 billion to settle various legal problems going back to financial crisis.

This comes on top of revelations of widespread manipulation by the big banks of the foreign-exchange market.

Wall Street is also awash in inside information unavailable to average investors.
Just weeks ago a three- judge panel of the U.S. court of appeals that oversees Wall Street reversed
an insider-trading conviction, saying guilt requires proof a trader
knows the tip was leaked in exchange for some “personal benefit” that’s
“of some consequence.”
Meaning that if a CEO tells his Wall Street golfing buddy about a
pending merger, the buddy and his friends can make a bundle — to the
detriment of small, typically middle-class, investors.
That three-judge panel was composed entirely of appointees of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
But both parties have been drinking at the Wall Street trough.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, the financial sector ranked fourth
among all industry groups giving to then candidate Barack Obama and the
Democratic National Committee. In fact, Obama reaped far more in
contributions from the Street than did his Republican opponent.
Wall Street also supplies both administrations with key economic
officials. The treasury secretaries under Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush – Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, respectfully, had both chaired
Goldman Sachs before coming to Washington.
And before becoming Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner had
been handpicked by Rubin to become president of Federal Reserve Bank of
New York. (Geithner is now back on the Street as president of the
private-equity firm Warburg Pincus.)
It’s nice that presidential aspirants are talking about rebuilding America’s middle class.
But to be credible, he (or she) has to take clear aim at the Street.
That means proposing to limit the size of the biggest Wall Street
banks; resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act (which used to separate
investment from commercial banking); define insider trading the way most
other countries do – using information any reasonable person would know
is unavailable to most investors; and close the revolving door between
the Street and the U.S. Treasury.
It also means not depending on the Street to finance their campaigns.

Nat King Cole Show Presenting for the first time on television Norman Granz's Jazz At The PhilarmonicRoy Eldrige,TrumpetFlip Philips,Tenor SaxIllinois Jaquet,Tenor SaxOscar Peterson,PianoRay Brown,BassHerb Ellis,GuitarJo Jones,Drums

Friday, January 9, 2015

About the Charlie Hebdo Massacre. I cannot believe folks actually went to kill cartoonists. They did.

Now, when I see insulting, demeaning, vile "comedians" attacking women (most seem to think that's a surefire way to get laughs), I either change the channel or leave. I won't listen to that radio show, nor buy that publication.

I will not go out to kill the person.

Please recall the furor over the "Piss Christ" art, or what happened to "The Dixie Chicks" after the comments about George Bush. How about what happened to Bill Maher?

We may have defended their freedom of speech --- but careers were ruined.

Perhaps that's why the (alleged) "Catholic Loon" Bill Donahue said the terrorists were "provoked" -- he may want an excuse for possible violence on the part of some of his followers.

How about all the "right to life" folks who support the killing of "abortion Doctors" -- aren't they also terrorists?

Isn't it time to stop giving ALL terrorists any sort of excuse? Isn't it time to stop ALL religions from affecting public policy, public health issues, judicial decisions?

We are not ancient goat herders -- even though too many of us act as if we are.

Saudi blogger and activist Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, is set to receive the first set of 50 lashes tomorrow.
Badawi will be flogged after Friday prayers tomorrow and continuously over a period of 20 weeks as the remainder of his sentence is carried out, according to Amnesty International.
Badawi, co-founder of the “Saudi Arabian Liberals” website and a well-known thinker and blogger, was sentenced in May 2014 to ten years in prison, and 1000 lashes after he was found “guilty of writing anti-Islamic discourse online.” He was also fined him the equivalent of $266,000, in a verdict Amnesty International called “outrageous.”
In September Badawi lost his appeal against his sentence.
This afternoon U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki called on Saudi Arabia to review Badawi’s case and “cancel this brutal punishment.”

* This was Charlie Parker's second studio session as a leader.Pianist Joe Albany and bassist Red Callender quit this session suddenly, forcing Parker to spend valuable rehearsal time finding replacements.This was the first of 3 takes of Ornithology. There was no Parker solo.

About Me

I'm just another old woman who has had wide ranging interests for a long time,
These include fishing, shooting, reading, cooking, and all manner of (mostly) left wing politics.
Born and bred in New York - Queens, to be precise - I now live in Texas, another state that folks seem to attack (like N.Y.) without ever having been here.
I'm also a fan of most sports -- esp. baseball, esp. the New York Yankees.
Originally a New York Giants (baseball) fan, I was crushed when they moved. It took many years wandering in the wilderness before I returned to baseball. I's all Wade Boggs fault. When I watched that artist, my love for baseball resurfaced. Since he was then a Yankee -- it had to be the Yankees.
The Mets pretended they had spiritual ties to the old Brooklyn Dodgers - no Giant fan could go there.
I tried - couldn't do it.